Recipes, reviews and recreation with the Madhouse Family - two parents, three kids, two dogs, all bilingual !

Friday, 27 October 2017

Awesome Little Green Men review

I've been seeing lots of Awesome Little Green Men at The Madhouse this week, but don't worry, I'm not hallucinating and we haven't been invaded by aliens - we've been discovering the latest collectible craze set to take the UK by storm.

Despite the name, they're not all green - you can collect characters from both the green and the blue army.

Inside the funky army truck-shaped packaging of the series 1 Starter Packs, we discovered three recruits on show and one mystery soldier hiding away in a blind bag. When the plastic packaging had been discarded, I collected it up and thought it felt heavy - it was lucky I checked because there were some dogtags tucked away inside the driver's cab part of the box which the Madhouse kids hadn't even noticed.

The product description says that "they may be small but their characters are larger than life and they're serious about the mission ahead". They have cute and totally unique facial expressions that really add to their appeal. Our favourite recruit was Major Attack, on the left, in his armoured vehicle that really rolls along. but we also love the determined look on Private Bolo's face, on the right, with his machine gun.

We also got Sgt Dealt-It with his gas mask (I love the tongue-in-cheek humour of the names, which probably goes straight over the heads of younger fans) and Lt Brave, who can barely see out of his helmet, despite handling a rocket launcher and lots of ammo.

In the blue army, we got our first female recruit - Sgt Pow, with a big bushy ponytail and a duo of pistols. We also had Capt Quiver, from the Special Forces.

Finally, we discovered Major Nerves, with an expression to suggest he's just about pooed his pants, and Corporal Frontline, who looks much more confident than his lily-livered comrade.

Pierre was delighted to see that Major Nerves comes complete with a parachute. He was slightly less delighted when he threw him out of the window so that he floated down to Sophie, standing on the pavement below, only for his legs to snap off on impact. Oops ! Maybe he should be renamed Major Casualty !

The dog tags are a handy way to keep track of which recruits you have in your collection. Pierre also liked wearing them around his neck, although he really couldn't understand why they are called dog tags when they have nothing to do with dogs !

You can also tick them off on the enclosed collector sheet, which has the blue army on the back.

There is also a game guide, which explains how you can play with your Awesome Little Green Men. You can also read the online game guide, which is actually much clearer than the black-and-white printed version. It all sounds quite complicated (to me at least !), but you basically line up two armies to go head to head, trying to attain the opposing team's goal (for example, an apple or a small soft toy that they need to protect). Players take turns to decide on an action - march or attack. If marching, you flick a slider (for example, a coin) down the table and the recruit marches to wherever the coin stops. If the coin falls off the table, he stays put. If he marches into another soldier, he takes a hit point. To attack, you put a coin next to your soldier and flick it at another soldier from the opposing army. If you hit him, you deduct a certain number of hit points. Where it gets complicated is that they all have different strengths and different numbers of hit points that they can withstand before being captured (nobody dies in this game). To make things even more complicated fun, you can add obstacles (that can be printed on card) and use bandage stickers (sold separately) to keep track of hit points. It's actually great fun and is a madcap mixture of Subbuteo, shove ha'penny and Platoon !

There are already 100 unique characters to collect in Series 1, including four super rare figures in the green army and the blue army. They're great as collectibles but the added game play makes them even more exciting than many similar mini figurines that just look pretty on a shelf.

Awesome Little Green Men are available in starter packs, which include four soldiers, blind boxes including one solider, a dog tag with chain, and a new recruit poster, a battle pack with game piece stickers and a deluxe battle pack which includes three rare vehicles.

About Me

I'm mum to Sophie (born in 2001), Juliette (born in 2005) and Pierre (born in 2009). We're all French/English bilingual - even our two dogs Didou and Vicky ! If you have any comments or want me to review your products or host a giveaway, you can contact me at cherylpasquier2002@yahoo.fr .